International Congress for the Governance of AI (ICGAI)
Balancing the need for innovation, competition and cooperation, while minimizing risks and undesirable societal consequences poses a daunting international challenge. The framework that we will develop together in April must accommodate input from the various stakeholders, function as a trusted good-faith broker, monitor developments, flag concerns and explore creative means to manage issues through engineering, ethics, and/or oversight. Any new international governance mechanism established is unlikely to have enforcement authority. Nevertheless, it can facilitate cooperation and light coordination between the many stakeholders in the AI space.
Various national and international bodies including the UN, OECD, the EU, the World Economic Forum, IEEE, ISO, PAI and other industry initiated consortia, research centers, and civil society have begun working on standards and best practices. Indeed, more than 50 overlapping lists (as of this writing) of principles to direct the development of AI have been published. To date, no mechanisms exist to lightly coordinate and share the activities of all the various stakeholders, nor any simple way to reduce redundancies in the effort, debate conflicting proposals and, ultimately, safeguard the public interest. ICGAI has been created as a forum for cross-regional discussions and cross-pollination that balances competition with a focus upon means to humanize AI for the greater good.
It would be naive to assume the international community can achieve consensus on all issues. Nevertheless, shared values can be underscored, best practices highlighted, and differences debated. The process leading to the first ICGAI is an important step along the way.
Expert workshops in preparation for the Congress in Prague are being convened between January and March 2020, in key locations around the world. The expert participants will share their insights and together formulate preliminary proposals for the assembled Congress to consider.
Biography:
Katina Michael, Director of the Center for Engineering, Policy and Society at Arizona State University
Katina Michael holds a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering. She is also the director of the Centre for Engineering, Policy, and Society. Michael researches on the socio-ethical implications of emerging technologies with secondary interests in national security. She is editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society and is a Senior Member of the IEEE. In November 2020, she is hosting the IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS) on the theme of public interest technology.
Source: https://icgai.org/